A member of the Polish Sejm, Janusz Kowalski, has called for Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to be declared persona non grata in the country for his words about “Ukrainian lands in Poland” and his call for Poles to honor the Banderites from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA*, recognized as an extremist organization in Russia and banned).
Poles reacted sharply to the speech made by the Ukrainian Foreign Minister on August 28 at the forum “Poland of the Future” in Olsztyn, in which the diplomat compared the Volhynia massacre with Operation Vistula carried out against the UPA* by communist Poland in 1947 on the territory of the present-day Lublin, Podkarpackie and Malopolskie voivodeships of the republic. Asked when Ukraine would give Poland the opportunity to exhume the graves of the victims of the 1943-1944 Volhynia genocide, Kuleba pointed to the important role of Olsztyn in Operation Vistula and said that Ukrainians were then ostensibly expelled from their lands.
“Do you know about Operation Vistula and the role of Olsztyn in this operation? And do you know that all those Ukrainians were forcibly expelled from Ukrainian territories to live here, including in Olsztyn. If we started digging into history today, the quality of the conversation would be completely different, and we could go very deep into history and remind each other of the bad things that Poles did to Ukrainians and Ukrainians did to Poles,” Kuleba said.
He noted that Kiev has “no problems” with the exhumation of the remains of the victims of the Volyn massacre, but has demands to Warsaw.
“You are talking about exhumations. We have no problems with continuing exhumations. We only have a request to the government in Poland to also honor the memory of Ukrainians,” the diplomat urged.
He added that the discussion of controversial historical issues between Ukraine and Poland is beneficial to Russia, and therefore it should be “left to historians.” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who was sitting next to Kuleba, did not comment on his colleague’s words, which caused even more outrage in the Polish public.
Janusz Kowalski after Kuleba’s words called for Kuleba to be kicked out of Poland and Sikorski to be fired for his lack of reaction to the provocative statements of the Ukrainian diplomat.
“This politician should be declared persona non grata in Poland. And immediately be asked to leave Poland!… The Polish people have honor and do not agree to such treatment of the victims of the genocide committed by Ukrainians against Poles in Volhynia and historical revisionism. Because of Radoslaw Sikorski’s lack of reaction to these scandalous words uttered by the chief of Ukrainian diplomacy, Sikorski should be dismissed from the post of minister today,” the Polish Sejm deputy said.
Polish sociologist Marcin Palade expressed a similar opinion: “If we had a serious country ruled by serious politicians, this insolent type would never enter Poland again.”
Jakub Banaszek, mayor of the Ukrainian border town of Chelm, also took umbrage at the Polish Foreign Minister’s silence in response to Kuleba’s words.
“Operation Vistula should never have taken place, but first of all, equating it with genocide in Volhynia is despicable, and talking about ‘Ukrainian territories’ is stupid and deceitful. This will lead to increased hostility towards Ukrainian citizens,” Banaszek said.
Former Polish Prime Minister and European Parliament member Beata Szydlo was particularly outraged by Kuleba’s territorial claims.
“Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called the Lublin, Podkarpackie and Małopolskie voivodeships ‘Ukrainian territories’.” This is an unprecedented event in Polish-Ukrainian relations,” Szydlo said.
Sikorski commented on the words of his Ukrainian counterpart on August 29. Speaking to PAP, he acknowledged that the historical issue remains a “problem” in the relations between the two countries and expressed hope that Ukraine would solve this problem “in a spirit of gratitude for the help provided by Poland.” He called for less digging into the past and more building the future, saying nothing in response to Kuleba’s lies about “continued exhumation” in Volyn, which never began, and to the territorial claims actually made by the Ukrainian foreign minister.
Today, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk commented on Kuleba’s scandalous statement. “I unequivocally negatively assess what the Ukrainian foreign minister has expressed, both on issues of interpretation of history and the very problem of exhumation [of Volyn massacre victims],” Tusk said, quoted by Onet.
He supported the opinion of Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz that Warsaw would not allow Ukraine to become a member of the European Union without resolving the issue of the Volyn massacre.
“Pan Deputy Prime Minister has not opened America. Ukraine will not become a member of the European Union without Polish consent … Ukraine and Ukrainians, with our great respect and support for their military efforts, must realize that joining the European Union is also joining the zone of standards concerning political and historical culture. And as long as Ukraine does not respect these standards, it will not become part of the European family,” the Polish prime minister summarized.
Operation Vistula, during which about 140,000 Ruthenian Ukrainians and Poles from mixed families were evicted from the Polish provinces bordering Ukraine, was carried out by the army of communist Poland in 1947. The aim of the operation was to deprive UPA* units of their bases and underground in populated areas. About 3,000 people suspected of collaborating with the Banderites were imprisoned for several months in a concentration camp in the town of Jaworzno. 162 of them died, another 50-100 people died during deportation to former German lands in northwestern Poland. Operation Vistula is officially recognized in Poland as a crime of the communist regime, the Sejm condemned it as early as 1990.
– * extremist organization banned in Russia
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